Table 11.
Research needs related to reducing disparities in diabetes and diabetes complications from the 2011 Diabetes Mellitus Interagency Coordinating Committee
| Diabetes mellitus |
| Identify racial and ethnic differences in the interactions among antenatal care, diet, gestational glycemic burden, and other aspects of the intrauterine environment, and the risk of diabetes and obesity in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. |
| Determine what behavioral strategies work well to promote and sustain effective lifestyle change in minority individuals at high risk for developing diabetes. |
| Determine what behavioral strategies are effective in promoting and sustaining adherence to diabetes treatment regimens in individuals belonging to racial and ethnic minority groups, to improve health outcomes. |
| Determine how the outcomes of the Diabetes Prevention Program can be translated in diverse settings and populations to prevent type 2 diabetes in youth and adults. |
| Determine the best approaches to optimize cardiometabolic risk reduction in diverse populations with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. |
| Determine health care interventions that are effective at reducing disparities in diabetes outcomes. |
| Determine when culturally tailored interventions are necessary and more effective, as opposed to using more general interventions, in reducing health disparities in diabetes outcomes. |
| Determine how health communication science can be harnessed for the reduction of health disparities in the prevention and control of diabetes. |
| Determine how multilevel interventions, combining policy/marketing, community, organization, delivery system, provider, and patient/family components, can be implemented and sustained to improve diabetes care and outcomes. |
| Diabetes complications |
| Identify nontraditional biological risk factors that contribute to underlying race/ethnic disparities in the development of diabetes and its complications. |
| Determine the “nonbiological” (i.e. environmental, social, cultural, and economic) factors across the lifespan that affect diabetes prevalence and progression to complications in different ethnic and racial groups. |
| Develop novel interventions to address the racial/ethnic disparities in diabetes incidence, complication rates, and mortality, and that take into account pharmacogenomics, environmental, social, cultural, and economic factors. |
Reproduced from two chapters in Complete Diabetes Research Strategic Plan (http://www2.niddk.nih.gov/AboutNIDDK/ReportsAndStrategicPlanning/DiabetesPlan/PlanPosting.htm): Special Needs for Special Populations (18) and Clinical Research to Practice: Translational Research (19).